Posts Categorized: Hamster Wheel

I was looking forward to having my first meal at 3pm after an already long day when my staff called me and said our point-of-sale system on 5 of our stores wasn’t working. After going through the regular troubleshooting items, I called the guys at the office where the server was located and my manager said “here, do you hear it?” to the tune of a high pitched grinding squeal that sounded like the computer was either going to explode or take-off into orbit. SCSI mechanical errors on the console. Never a stranger to catastrophe, it was a familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach. The hard drive decided to take a dump on this beautiful Friday after the El Nino clouds finally gave way to some California sunshine gold. Yay!!!

Los Angeles rush-hour traffic is the ultimate test of bladder control and patience. I lost $695 dollars and 5 hours of my life crawling through Friday rush-hour pavement to get my hands on a new hard drive with our data restored on it. Same day emergency service – I love the support team of my provider, but the product itself? Not so much.

As I was preparing to finally leave the office, Nickel decided he’d had enough and unceremoniously unleashed a torrent of piss deep into the chair of my manager. In the kerfuffle, he pissed on me too. I was pissed.

This is categorically the most amazing view I’ve ever had outside a plane window – second only to that green wisp of Aurora Borealis I met for the first time, on a solo trip in 2003. This trip of course, came with a price to pay in the form of a 12-hour delayed connecting flight. I would do it again only if I had the rest of my team with me.

Tired, but I need to keep prepping myself that the mission has yet to begin. Bring it on.

My head is going to explode. As expected, my last full day on the field held more than this month’s quota for stress, caused by massive disappointment in certain decision making skills of people you expect to know better. Sometimes it makes me think how futile my time is behind this monitor trying to get data in order, when apparently the real battle is where you aren’t looking.

Greetings from Guam. In another round of hamster wheeling, I laid out a 15-hour workday yesterday (Saturday) powered by an increasing addiction to coffee. It’s Sunday and I’m getting kicked out of the coffee shop soon. Wrote and polished off a few macros to run as a morning job that consolidates reports (that are strictly designed for printing to paper – i.e. there are no columns and easy way to dump to Excel) across 6 disparate systems. Fun times.

Taking the early flight out of Guam again tomorrow. Work is never ending, and I’ll need to plan a longer trip here for next time.

The fun part is trying to make ourselves better, in everything that we do. Isn’t that what makes life interesting anyway? Without the struggle to make ourselves better people, without breaking the sweat which builds our character, the accumulation of time on your plate becomes meaningless.

Try not to run too fast in your hamster wheel – but if you have to, might as well have fun doing it.

I’m beside the empty gate counters of Saipan’s airport. Totally empty. It’s 6:20pm but it looks more like 3:22am in terms of human activity. Even the guards by the security check point are nowhere to be found. This place smells like the old Topanga mall before it became nice.

Of the many times I’ve been here, I always seem to forget that they close the counters for a good solid hour before the flight back to Guam that only takes 50 minutes. Then I get flashbacks that this isn’t the only time I’ve been shuttered out from the 40 seater prop plane, which apparently needs to get controlled by border control and customs so much that you need to lounge around longer than you conceivably should together with all 8 passengers of the entire flight. And so here I am.

I’m just incredibly tired. Been busting my ass to get a project completed, and although I’ve been here for several days, it was barely enough for me to have a clear conscience leaving certain things (outside of my control) to piece themselves together. Whatever. I left work at 4am yesterday after pulling an almost 20 hour shift. Feels great to feel pain once in a while.

This morning after checking out, I went to the back of the hotel and realized that it is a very picturesque coastline, very muted and clean. To think of it, this island might actually be more of my liking than more developed places. It exudes a very provincial feel, with a sense of struggle from its very existence that makes it appear more real rather than constructed. I just had a miserable time trying to sleep because I kept imagining Japanese and American soldiers and civilians spilling blood from the horrors of WWII. Horrible. No thanks, suicide mountain!

The only thing that is bothering me right now aside from a potential change ticket fee, is the fact that I’m most likely going to miss an amazing sunset from the air. Ugh.

The best part is accomplishing something that senior tech support says cannot be done.

I am always quick to jump into the foxholes in an attempt to accomplish something that I think can and should be done in the name of efficiency, but I usually get carried away on the details, with detriment. Yet in the rare occasions that I stand my ground and make it worth having 40 tabs open on Google Chrome (EAFS and HTPS file systems, SCO Unix, SCSI controllers, jejemons), its almost comic relief to realise that I am possibly not that insane. Perhaps inefficient in coming across the winning formula, but still a win nonetheless.

I would gloss over the details, but I think it might cause me to throw up. Another long day tomorrow. Heeeell yeeaaaah, bring it!

I’m sure you cats have experienced that feeling when you’re just about over a mini-tragedy, and have come to accept it for what it is. And then some twist of fate quietly slaps you in the face, and you realize that there may be a shining solution to your tragedy, that the terrible can be turned inside-out into something truly amazing. And you try your best to keep your feet on the ground as you slowly retrace your steps in order to fully evaluate the situation. It all boils down to that one moment when you find out the truth.

Time slows down to a crawl and the world outside your peripheral vision ceases to exist. And as your heart swells with anticipation and hope, it gets slayed wide fucking open by a small technicality, a small truth that destroys the very fabric of your day.

Count till ten, and the world is still the same as it was thirty seconds ago. And in a twisted way, that’s a really good thing.

I passed by a small warehouse in the valley in a quest to look for odd metric screws. As I got inside, there was nobody at the counter and was about to hit the “press the button for service” but I lay my finger on it while eavesdropping on the profanity exploding from the back door. Basically, the guy was ripping his employee a new asshole. About how he spent years working and taking orders and doing everything from the ground up, and about how this job isn’t effing easy and if you wanted to have a good time go sit your ass down in the movies and work there, about how he says things straight and doesn’t do bullshit. Say it like it is, brother.

Right before I leave the house, the dog decides to piss all over his leg. Must be a sign of things to come.

When I get to the office, one of the guys tells me that a jackass customer ran off with a box of paint and other tidbits from the shop.

Fortunately, we setup surveillance cameras throughout the showroom floor, and caught the bastard on video. So I’ve spent the past couple of hours trying to figure out how to export the damn video, or even just screenshots of the schmuck into a USB key, and it ain’t working. Trying to access it through the network isn’t happening either, looks like it would only work with an old version of IE. Why am I always stuck with crap software? Nothing ever f cking works the way it should.

So I decide to take a break and pickup my freshly coated exhaust parts from Pyramid Powdercoaters down the street. I take the dog out with me, and he decides to piss on his leg. Again.

We as consumers have expectations on how things should work. A microwave should heat up my food. A brake pedal is designed to stop the car. We buy things because they’re meant to do something in particular. Manufacturers/service providers thrive in this capitalist market, and owe their existence to generating value through their ability to address a need and fulfill it. Of course there is that delicate balance between money and value, both horizontally and vertically through the supply chain. Doesn’t matter if you’re a consumer buying from a retailer, or a wholesaler buying from a manufacturer. Spend less, get less. Spend more, get more. Or that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Technology needs to become more transparent. The last thing anyone in the cube wants to worry about, is a supposed solution that only causes more problems. Sometimes I feel like I’m stuck with 1988-era answers to 2010-era problems.